Advita Fund USA

I joined AdVita USA in 2009 soon after I moved to the USA from St.-Petersburg, Russia, and started working at MDAnderson Cancer Center as a cancer researcher. I spent 4 years working in the hospital back home providing diagnostics for leukemia patients and I have witnessed

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Nonprofit Overview

Mission: AdVita Fund USA was founded to help improve access to most effective treatment to as many children and adult cancer patients as possible. We want to make sure that our patients’ lives depend not on their financial situation, but on the progress of modern medicine.

Results: Raised over $300,000 in 2012. Contributed to cost of cancer treatment and bone marrow donor searches for 36 patients.

Target demographics: Children and young people with cancer from Russia and former Soviet Union.

Programs: * We support patients who have to travel for treatment abroad due to having high-risk and advanced cancers, or other serious illnesses, and can no longer be offered treatment within Russia.
* Bone marrow transplants: we contribute to the cost of donor searches and delivery of transplants and imported equipment for bone marrow transplantation. Since Russia lacks its own bone marrow donor registry, patients who need the transplants have to pay over $25,000 for the search for the donor, collection of bone marrow and delivery of transplant to St. Petersburg.
* Patients from Former Soviet Union: we support children and their families who travel to St. Petersburg from impoverished former Soviet Union countries that lack adequate medical facilities, trained personnel and medications. As non-citizens, these children are billed the full cost of treatment.
* Supporting medications: we supply necessary medications to the children who may need long-term therapy with expensive drugs. For example, antifungal drugs, such as Vfend, cost over $3,000 a month.

Community Stories

19 Stories from Volunteers, Donors & Supporters

I joined AdVita USA in 2009 soon after I moved to the USA from St.-Petersburg, Russia, and started working at MDAnderson Cancer Center as a cancer researcher. I spent 4 years working in the hospital back home providing diagnostics for leukemia patients and I have witnessed first hand all the difficulties that cancer patients face in Russia: lacking money for proper medication, poorly equipped hospitals, limited availability of modern treatment options, almost no clinical trials open for patients with relapsed cancer. Given my professional background I focused my efforts in AdVita USA on case management. Together with our volunteers I am trying to get second opinions from renown oncologists, arrange on site consultation and review of medical records, enroll relapsed patients into clinical trials, provide Russian physicians with recommendations from American specialists. AdVita USA is a great team that I am learning from every day! It is a very enriching personal and professional experience.

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I would like to express our deep gratitude to Advita Fund USA, and Marina Ouano personally, that
helped us (Popov family from Vologda) and paid for air tickets from Russia to Israel where we went for treatment. The volunteers where always in contact with us and they were very responsive. Thank you
very much!

My name is Sergey Pushkin . I live in Ukraine. I was diagnosed with melanoma.
For a resident of the CIS, it does not just sound like a death sentence. It is a death sentence.
We have prehistoric level of medical care, lack health insurance system, while effective modern drugs are more expensive here than in the United States and other civilized countries. Often these drugs are simply not available, because there is no one to buy them - people do not have money to buy them. Patients lose hope.
It is very important that there are charities like ADVITA FUND. Such organizations are very much needed.
They help and give hope to patients for access to treatment and recovery.
I contacted ADVITA FUND USA for help. I was surprised to find their volunteers genuinely wanting to help me. They are looking for solutions for my problem and offering their help.In particularly helps me alot Marina Ouana. Thank you Marina ,thank you for human support

Great organization that helps children and adults with cancer in different countries travel and receive cancer treatment at one of the best hospitals in the world. Great people to work with. Everyone is a volunteer, so it is great to see that all the resources go to help out the patients.

"If you ever need a helping hand, it's at the end of your arm, as you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others."

My name is Marina, I’m 23 and from Russia. First of all, I'd like to express my gratitude to a helpful ADVITA FUND USA and say that this organization could timely make arrangements for my arrival in the USA, helped me with hotel accomodation and medical consultation at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. I pretty know my illness osteosarcoma involving the left tibia is very dangerous, that's why surgeons and chemotherapists from Russia asked the colleagues from MD Anderson to check me, make some additional medical evaluation. I agreed. The whole trip would cost much money for me but, fortunately, I was said about such a wonderful fund as ADVITA US. Especially I'm sincerely happy with the meeting such interesting and careful people from ADVITA (Marina Ouano and Antonina Kurtova)! They showed me and my mother not only the doors and passages of MD Anderson but entertained us, drove through the whole city and gave many useful advices. Thank them and this organization very much for everything!!!

Advita fund is the non-profit organization that raises money for a great cause by helping Russian orphan children striked with Leukemia with their medical costs. I remember one of the charity diiner events organized by our friend to help 12-year old girl from St Petersburg. With her progressing illness she needed a bone marrow transplant which would have been performed at MD Anderson. As a result, we raised a sufficient amount of funds to do a medical procedure. We felt good by giving a young girl a Hope to live! She passed away a few months later - her body was too weak to survive a new bone marrow transpalnt. But she died with hope - nobody gave up on her! By contributing money for a great cause, you give a hope and chance to cure a sick child ! The legacy we leave is not in our possessions, but What We Do !

I have started volunteering with Advita Fund USA in October 2009. The reason I joined the team was Fund's involvement in assisting patients from the former Soviet Union on treatment in Russia and other countries. In many cases, these patients get hit the hardest since, as non-citizens, they need to pay full costs of treatment and living abroad. And here is where Advita Fund USA comes to make a life-saving difference. I have been personally involved in helping a young patient from Azerbaijan on leukemia treatment in Germany and a child from Ukraine on treatment in Italy. Both experiences demonstrated the extent by which Advita patients rely on the Fund and its donors, and how immensely grateful their families are for the Fund’s support and commitment.

My story was begun in 2010 in Ukraine when Doctor said that my mother has Melanoma diagnosis. That time we didn't expect how serious is this. The treatment was started. Time was gone, but no response neighter from surgery nor from chemotherapy. We start looking for innovation. New and effective treatment was found in EU and USA. But we were not able even to make examination to identify elegibility for such new treatment. Months surfing Internet, hundreds mails to different instances with any small chance to find someone who could help were unsucessfull. We were offered to pass treatment in one of the German Hospital, but the price was too high - about 8000 Euro per month. We were unable to pay, and it was refused. State of mother health coming worst and worst. Suddenly answer was received from Advita USA. Mrs Marina Ouano responded with helping hand. She directed me to right person in Saint Petersburg - Elena Gracheva. Together we start working to solve my mother's treatment problem. Elena found laboratory where we could get BRAF test. It is in the Saint Petersburg. The histological glasses were delivered with volunteers help there. And now we are awaiting results. At the same time we were searching available clinical trials in a number of Oncoinstitutes over the world. And now selection has fallen on to the University of Pennsylvania,US, where it is possible to get free treatment, excluding only transfer and other related to diagnostic expences. Medical records, which are required by appointed Doctor in US, are under preparation and translation. Once we finish, I guess we start making arrangements for transfering with subsequent treatment. I know that for any question I can ask Advita and their will answer me as much as in their ability and power. I received not only real help but assurance of success. My eyes same as eyes of my mother are full of Hope, which was lost in 2010. My all most sincere THANKS to those two women Marina and Elena as part of Advita representatives. I don't know how my life could turn over when I certainly knew that the treatment was available but I couldn't reach it for my mother. She has nobody except her children. My farther left me and my sister when we were small childs walking children garden. All life she works to make everything that we are her children could become a normal social chain amongst people. She never had time to rest. Now she is 55. She just become grandmother. And now she is only thinking about her decease. She don't have time to play with her granddaughter. Hard life with hard decease. She merit to be alive.

Advita Fund USA has been helping many people with cancer through the years to get the treatment and have a chance at Life. I have been volunteering for this wonderful organization for about 2 years now. Everyone at Advita is a volunteer, and it is so gratifying to see that all the funds raised go directly to patients for treatment and other medical expenses. I personally have met children and their families who came to the U.S. for treatment thanks to Advita's hard work. All of those patients have received proper treatment and on their way to full recovery. I really hope that Advita would get more recognition in the U.S. in order raise more funds for cancer patients who are in desperate need of help. This is truly a great organization ran by honest and caring people.

AdvitaFundUsa is a unique charity ran on kindness and selfless determination of it's volunteers and first and foremost it's founder Marina Ouano. The fund helps cancer patients from Russia and former Soviet republics to get access to clinical trials in US and provides assistance with treatment expenses. The majority of people helped by AdvitaUSA are considered to be hopeless cases in Russia and mostly left on their own in search of treatment. For these patients Advita's help means a difference between life and death. Advita gives hope not only for physical survival but also shows that kindness of strangers is not an empty sound, that there are people on laid planet who care for you without even knowing you - just because you need this care so much! Marina and Tonya show true dedication and invest not only time and money but heart and soul in giving hope to so many people helped by the fund. it's impossible to overestimate what this hope and this love mean to people who came to Advita as to their last resort.

The reason why I support Advita is because I know that my contribution will actually make a difference. People who run this fund invest their life in saving the lives of others - and they do it passionately. I am proud of them and will always be supporting Advita. These people work hard to turn a sad story into a happy one.

Something really important is happening, in Russia where raising money for a great causes always seems to be fraudulent, right now you can hear about so many different organizations/funds who really helps and cares about every single soul who is seeking the help. Advita Fund USA is one of them. My close friend is the Advita’s active volunteer, and from first hand I know so many stories of hope, and cure, and life. And I am fortunate to be part of it as a donor, by making contribution I know that anybody who needs help will get it.

The first time I encounter this organization was when my friend - active volunteer of ADVITA - was helping one Russian boy get a cancer treatment in MD Anderson in Houston, TX. This organization was able to raise enough funds to bring him here for treatment. Me and my friends were helping further to raise money for all expenses, such as medication. And this one just one story that I saw personally, there were and are many more that ADVITA USA is trying to help and it does truly make a difference - in lives of those kids and their parents. I'am amazed by all those people deeply devoted to this cause and doing their best in helping children from Russia and former Soviet republics to get the best cancer treatment they can no matter what.

My friend Antonina Kurtova told me about Advita fund. I am usually sceptical about such a things, so I did a thorough review and finally I came to conclusion that this is real place where you can help real people. I know some frineds of my frineds were helped by Advita. Thats just a good thing where you can donate some $ that you would otherwise spent on extra beer. I am advertising Advita among my friends both is the US and Russia, as well as in some other countries. This fund really important!!! // Artem Lada, Nebraska/Russia

Sergey M. 39, Moscow Region, Russia.I have been sick with Hodgkins lymphoma since 1997. I have gone through chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and stem cells transplantation. I have had 2 relapses. After the third relapse, doctors in Russia told me that there was no more hope for remission in my case and suggested palliative treatment. Only very advanced, cutting-edge (and also very expensive) treatment abroad could be helpful in my case.
I have found out about the Advita Fund from another patient who by then had received a very substantial help from this fund. I contacted Advita and also got my lucky chance. I received a very advanced treatment in USA, which would be absolutely impossible without financial and information support form Advita. if you could help Advita financially, then this fund would able to support even more patients who need help.

Elena, 41, Togliatti, Samara Region, Russia.
In 2008. I was diagnosed with breast cancer with metastases to the lungs.
I took 5 lines of chemotherapy (1st 7 courses, 2nd 6 courses, 3rd 6 courses, 4th 6 courses, 5th 12 courses). A neighbor in the ward gave me the address of Marina Quano and I asked her for help. Throughout the year, with her assistants Marina is actively engaged in my problem. She picks me for possible clinical studies, consults with doctors from other countries on the treatment strategy and the required additional tests, reports on new developments in medical oncology by means of articles from technical journals, providing psychological support without ignoring any one of my letter or request, always timely and accurate answers to questions.

I want to tell the whole world and will continue to do my best to spread the word about this OUTSTANDING non-profit organization. The amount of compassion, understanding, professionalism and *real practical help* I 've (my family has) received through them is AMAZING. The dedication of volunteers who run this Fund is nothing short of admirable! The amount of effort, time, even their personal investment they put into this cause that they really believe in is very touching to someone like me who just happened to encounter the world of childhood cancer as a result of personal tragedy.

I hope their base of contributors continues to grow every year. Ability to accept income tax deductible donations is SUCH a huge advantage that needs to be utilized by more people/businesses. It is such a unique, wonderful opportunity to invest in young lives: to help save lives which otherwise don't have a chance in their own homeland!

Advita Fund gives an opportunity to adults and children to find proper cancer treatment outside of their country, where all the treatment options were exhausted.
This Fund has helped save many lives and attempted to save even more . Advita gets more and more patients every day, however, there are still not enough finances raised.
The more volunteers Advita gets, the more people will know about it, the more lives will be saved.